It may resemble sports betting, but those who run it — and those who play it — say it's not. They cite the gambling law that labels fantasy sports as a game of skill, where picking players to fill a team depends a lot less on sheer luck than picking a team to win a game against the Vegas spread.
He's not counting on it lasting. In the fall, he'll be playing from South Bend, where he is pursuing an MBA at Notre Dame so he will have something to fall back on.
He's not alone. Dan Gaspar was just out of college working as a claims representative at an insurance company in Wisconsin, when he started playing daily fantasy games three years ago. He has an MBA, but didn't need it to figure out that there could be more money to be made in online fantasy play than in the insurance business.
Albertson's business on this day was trying to outsmart a few guys in one game, maybe a few thousand in another. Crunching numbers to enter some 500 fantasy sports contests before the first pitch of the day,Wholesale NFL Jerseys, he was hoping for a score before the night was out.
And if you happen to end up ahead, the winnings are deposited in your account before you wake up the next morning.
You can play against one other player or thousands. Albertson enters 500 games a week.
Still,Jerseys NFL China, he says, he's not in a league like Albertson and others.
"Compared to what I was making as a claims representative there was quite a difference," Gaspar said. "Plus I didn't have to get yelled at every day by people who just got in car accidents."
Right now, though, it can be a lucrative business for those at the top. The day Albertson was filling out his teams on the plane to Detroit he ended up ahead $4,500 on his investment of $22,000.
It's daily fantasy sports and it's legal in most states, thanks to an exemption the major sports leagues carved out under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The same legislation that outlawed online poker as a game of chance allows fantasy players to do what regular sports bettors outside of Nevada only dream about — wager money online.
It's legal — except in Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and Washington — where state laws are more strict. That's in contrast to online sports betting, which is allowed only in Nevada and, in a very limited form, Delaware.
Albertson is so good at it that he has hedge funds and option trading desks talking to him about wanting to invest in his system. The former professional poker player was looking for something to keep his interest after online poker was effectively banned by the 2006 act. He found it just in time for the NFL season in 2011, investing $500 to start and adding a few hundred here and there as the losses started to mount.
"Two years ago investors would have been very skeptical, even nervous, about daily fantasy sports," said Nigel Eccles, the co-founder and CEO of FanDuel. "Today they see this as very good for sports. Our players consume 40 percent more sports than regular fantasy sports players. They spend an average of 24 hours a week watching,Soccer Jerseys China, searching and doing research on sports."
The profits are so easy — daily fantasy sites take about 10 percent off the top of every contest as their fee — that Comcast Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of giant Comcast Corporation, invested $11 million in FanDuel last year to get a piece of the action. Even mainstream media landmark Sports Illustrated is offering daily fantasy cash games of its own.
Cory Albertson was cruising at 30,000 feet and, like others on the plane to Detroit, taking care of some business on his laptop.
Still, the success of any given player — no matter how skilled — is predicated on new players coming in who are not as sophisticated. Getting those players and keeping them even when they are losing money is why the sites offer double money bonuses, entries into various contests, and trips to Vegas among other enticements.
"I knew it was a matter of time before I had a breakthrough week and was on the right side of the luck factor," Albertson said. "I stayed with it that season and ended up with like $8,000 or something. I felt the model had sort of proven itself and most likely I was demonstrating I had a skill edge in these games."
One company — the leading site FanDuel — has some $6 million a week up for grabs now and expects to triple its base to some 500,000 customers this NFL season. Dozens of other companies have sprouted up offering everything from daily play to help — for a fee — on selecting the right mix of players.
His spreadsheets contained names familiar to anyone who follows baseball. Pi
